bakerstreetfandomcom-20200222-history
Talk:The Hounds of Baskerville/@comment-124.171.62.29-20130312115113/@comment-7456389-20130711041803
I dunno, I have a different theory, myself. I'm positive that he's dead, and I get the impression that not only Sherlock, but Mycroft as well, intended for him to die on that rooftop because they both knew what he was up to long before any of this. The whole situation, not starting just in the ending scene of this episode, but way back in The Great Game, just smacks of Mycroft's involvement. Keep in mind that in The Great Game, when the "pink phone" rings for the first time, Sherlock says, "I've been expecting this for some time." As they keep saying, Mycroft "IS the British government," therefore it would be very easy for them both to figure the situation out. The Holmes brothers, two freakishly intelligent people who can both solve crimes in minutes that completely baffle the police, had a year and half to work on it between finding out about Moriarty and the events of The Reichenbach Fall, so it would be a bit hard to believe that by this time in the series, they didn't have this guy completely figured out and a plan in place. But I still think the whole Richard Brook thing is real, and that Jim Moriarty was the false identity. I don't think his name was based on the stolen painting, but the painting he chose to steal was based on his real name... I think he was trying to get Sherlock to guess his name starting all the way back in The Great Game. If you think about it, as Richard, he claimed to have been in a long running network TV drama called "Emergency" and to have been the storyteller on a series of childrens' DVD's, something very easy to confirm, whereas all the newspaper articles we saw on-screen all said Jim was a man of mystery of no fixed abode. It would make so much more sense that he has a legitimate career under his real name while working as a "consulting criminal" under a fake name. Remember also that as a consulting criminal, he never met with any of his clients in person... but when his face was all over the media, if he was recognized, he could simply play the "Sherlock hired me" card a little earlier. Plus, think about the package Mrs. Hudson signed for, about which she says the name of the sender was a funny German name like the fairy tales... Rumplestiltzkin? Guess my name? Notice that Sherlock doesn't even look or ask who that sender is... because he already knows. So I think Mycroft was playing Richard the whole time, allowing Richard to believe he had him over a barrel to keep his guard down, and that Sherlock was in on it the whole time. Although I'm not totally sure that Mycroft completely let Sherlock in on the entire thing, especially after Sherlock's massive misstep in A Scandal In Belgravia. And as seen clearly in The Blind Banker, Sherlock isn't above keeping big things from John, and the writers seem to be trying to keep the audience on John's level so that we don't get ahead of Sherlock, so just because we don't see all this doesn't mean it didn't happen. :-) However, we all had our theories about how the season 1 finale would be resolved, and I seriously doubt anyone at all guessed they'd be saved by a BeeGees ringtone... also, I did see an excerpt from an interview of Benedict Cumberbatch in which he said that even the crowds of fans who stood there and watched the beginning of The Empty Hearse being filmed still have no idea what really happened... so I could still be very wrong. X-)